The priorities Valdano expressed should become the watermark of any football club, organisation, and player who wishes to remain relevant in an age where there are so many distractions and outlets compete for an audience.
Yet, it can be emphatically stated that for the past four years, our senior national team has failed to meet the criteria established by Valdano. Of course, I am stating the obvious. However, much like what is done at support groups that work on defeating substance abuse, it is important that we acknowledge that since the Soca Warriors waved thank you to their adoring fans in Kaiserslautern, we have failed to win and have certainly failed to please the crowd.
The challenge to navigate the Soca Warriors back to a place of respectability has now fallen upon the shoulders of Russell Latapy.
It would be a gross understatement to say that Russell has accepted a serious challenge; not the least of which is to breathe a sense of legitimacy into a programme that has seen all of the goodwill constructed through the 2006 campaign torn down and incinerated soon into the buildup of the 2010 campaign.
Sadly, such a precipitous drop from the heights achieved in 2006 is a characteristic not exclusive to our senior team. Upon the slightest accomplishment, it is common to hear the refrain “we reach!” soon followed by the screeching sounds of progress halted by poor individual or organisational decisions.
Upon our return from Germany, the ill-fated struggle between players and administrators threatened to destroy all that was righteous and wholesome about the story of little T&T; the country whose fans and players won over supporters throughout Germany and the world. From my own perspective, the winds of change emerged soon after the campaign when the decision was made to reduce the portfolio assigned to me as Technical Director.
No longer would I be as instrumental in the entire national team structure as I had been from 2004-2006. My main function as technical director would instead be “confined” to coaching development and goalkeeping and others would instead assume national team and player development duties.
I write this, not to absolve myself from the debacle of the 2010 campaign, but to illustrate that I too have been affected when we get “too happy” after an accomplishment and discard fundamental elements that produced and in some ways exceeded desired results.
Avarice, ambition, and the absence of mutual respect led the senior national programme astray. The question is what can be done to return to the place where prominence and pride in our football programme was felt among all within the football family in T&T. Our success in Germany was attributed to many factors but none more important than a spirit of cooperation between coaches, administrators, and players.
The recent comments and subsequent actions of San Juan Jabloteh coach, Terry Fenwick, is a significant example of what must be avoided in order to move our national teams forward.
Our coaches must work together or get out of each others’ way. Within our coaching ranks, a “mash up mentality” is often on display.
We see this toxic by product of ambition in our politics and other areas of society where those who fail to get satisfaction, engage in actions that undermine the efforts of others; partly in the hope of getting the opportunity to lead a programme, a company, or a nation themselves or just to see a nemesis fail. In this increasingly competitive world we face, a society of limited resources such as ours must reject this mentality with all haste.
I know and I have no grudges with Terry but I disagree with his reasoning behind pulling his players from the training sessions conducted by Russell. Such an assertion is incorrect because Russell shares his programme with me on a consistent basis.
Russell has organised his sessions in a manner that addresses the main deficiency that bedevils many of our teams: keeping possession.
Since possession is the focus, every facet of Russell’s training sessions, that I have seen, is structured to address the stated deficiency. I see both structure and relevance consistently on display in these sessions from the warm up to technical training (drills) to small-sided conditional games that progress to 11 vs 11 games.
Furthermore, I have to commend Russell on his considerate and complimentary approach to refrain from fitness training while the players are already engaged in their club pre-season training.
Though Terry has every right to determine the availability and training of his club players to the national team during non-Fifa dates, I would liked to have seen Terry share his concerns directly with Russell rather than through the press. Russell does indeed have a tremendous set of tasks to accomplish in order to fix a damaged programme. However, he cannot accomplish such tasks on his own.
Once decisions are made in consideration for the good of T&T football, rather than the personal good of Fenwick, Latapy or any other coach who aspires to earn the honor of leading our senior footballers, T&T football will be on its way to not only win, but also please the crowd.